1974 VW Standard Beetle Light Switch

[ErikRamirez]

So I’m a complete noob when it comes to working on beetles. I recently bought a 1974 beetle and long story short, my son shorted and melted the light switch and its wires. I bought the new switch, I just don’t know where to get the wires to rewire it. I’m not sure how to do it either. Does anyone know where I can get the wires to redo it or what can I use? I’d appreciate the help and feedback.

[VW_Jimbo]

Welcome!

You could try the classified section for a used harness. That would be the best course. Find one from a 74 Standard and you are set!

My second choice would be to construct my own. eBay sells a number of different wire in different colors with tracers (the secondary color on a wire) of different colors.

My question is to why it fried the switch and the wires?
_________________
Jimbo

There is never enough time to do it right the first time, but all the time necessary the second time!

[ashman40]

The STD Beetle still used round pull knobs mounted to the dash. The wiring is pretty straight forward. This pic from Speedy Jim's site shows a simplified diagram.

If you are asking where you can source the proper black/yellow, black/white, grey/red colored wires?? Your cheapest option is to find a Beetle being parted out and buy/get the headlight harness wires. Any STD Beetle from '71-later will use similar colored wires for the headlights. These can be spliced into your non-damaged wires.


If you are okay with non-OE wires and a DIY solution... source solid colored wires and hand mark the wire so you can ID them. A solid yellow wire and 1min pulling it past a permanent black marker and you have a yellow/black striped wire. Do the same with a grey wire + red marker and white wire + black marker and you have all your striped wiring. The solid red and solid grey wires are easy enough to source from Amazon, eBay or even your FLAPS. Just be sure your are using the correct wire gauge for each circuit. Larger/thicker than original wire is okay, but be sure you don't use smaller wire, especially for the headlight paths.

Look for the headlight switch (E1) below. The stock wiring diagram shows the wire gauge in a decimal format in the wire (4.0, 2.5, 1.5, 0.5) These are the metric wire size. 4.0 = 4.0 sq-mm cross-sectional area of the wire conductor). The conversion from metric to AWG can be found here.

_________________
AshMan40
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'67 Beetle #1 {project car that never made it to the road }
'75 Beetle 1200LS (RHD Japan model) {junked due to frame rot}
'67 Beetle #2 {2019 project car - Wish me luck!}

[busdaddy]

Now and then you get lucky and someone butchers out the harness with the switch, like this one: https://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=2390977 , good deal too.

_________________
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